


tree rings (and other layers)

by hangthe_stars



Series: Mixing Memory and Desire [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: -Ish, Autumn feel, Bad Parenting, Birthday Presents, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Idiots in Love, M/M, a handful of angst, a never ending supply of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 11:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20796098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangthe_stars/pseuds/hangthe_stars
Summary: 1993 - winterEddie is a prisoner in his own home. It's his birthday and he celebrates it alone. Until he doesn't.





	tree rings (and other layers)

**Author's Note:**

> "I also learned the word dendrochronology - analyzing the patterns of tree rings to know everything that has ever happened to a tree. This is how I love you. I am peeling back my skin, layer by layer, so you will finally know everything inside me." - Roxanne Gay, from 'Strange Gods'.
> 
> this is the edited version.

_ 1993 – winter.  _

Edward  Kaspbrak was alone in his room, trapped, on his eighteenth birthday. The reality of that imposed on any happy thoughts he could possibly have about becoming an adult - (legally). In his mouth, he tasted the toothpaste that had taken away the sickly-sweet chocolate cake from between his teeth but what prevailed was something bitter. Something like the salt of tears. He wasn’t crying but it welled up in him like an inevitability. He refused to be weak and cry. That would be pathetic but most of all, it would be allowing his mother the satisfaction of ruining his birthday more than she already had.

The thing was, Eddie wasn’t sick. He’d gotten the hang of independence over the years, had gotten familiar with arguing with his mother when he knew she was wrong but sometimes she knew just the right thing to say to set off his own anxieties and give in to her manipulative ways. Eddie hadn’t been ill all day, all week, all month. Somehow, his mother had cornered him with concern coated in sugar, her sharp voice trilling,  _ Eddie, dear, you don’t look well at all, you should stay home today _ . And Eddie had felt a little tickle in his throat when he’d woke that morning so he stayed at home. Then one day had turned into two and two had turned into three. Before he knew it, Eddie had missed the butt-end of the week and she had him trapped for the weekend. Right where she wanted him all along; trapped inside on his birthday; away from his friends and away from Richie, as far from happiness as she could get him. Because,  _ apparently _ , Sonia  Kaspbrak considered happiness as equal to sin, and her idea of love was roughly translated – in some twisted land – to suffocation. That’s how Eddie felt: suffocated. Even his bedroom had been tainted by Sonia’s overbearing shadow. There was not a space in that house where Eddie could breathe.

Eddie was lay in bed on his side, watching the minutes pass by like some chilling countdown to the end of all time. (Or the end of his birthday. Which felt as devastating as the apocalypse). It was well into the night. The clock displayed  _ 23:26  _ in red digits. He stared at the clock until his eyes started to burn. He wanted to cry but he wouldn’t let himself. It was tears of frustration that burned in his eyes, and a sudden, desperate need to get as far away from his mother as possible. As soon as he graduated, he was gone. He’d be out of Derry. Him and Richie – on the road to the future together.

It was cold in his bedroom but he didn’t care enough about his shivering to wriggle under the duvet. He lay still, frozen in a whirlwind of feelings. He wondered what it would feel like to scream – a raw, guttural scream that would tear up his throat and make tears spring into his eyes. He wondered how it would feel to shake the walls of the house with a scream. How it would feel to get all of the weights off his chest.

A noise cut through the pressing silence of the house. It was a quiet noise, muffled, like a voice in a dream, present but indiscernible. Eddie felt each limb locking up in fright and when he squeezed his eyes  shut he saw something in the darkness there – the flash of a memory. Wet, dark tunnels. Blood on palms. A million teeth. A noise came again. This time it was a distinct  _ clink, clink  _ and Eddie felt the breath leave his lungs, relieved. He knew that sound.

He unfroze, rolling out of bed and moving to the window. Sure enough, Richie Tozier was stood beneath his bedroom window at the side of his house, grinning up at him and waving. It may have been nearing midnight but Richie was the brightest thing Eddie had ever seen, as if he embodied the glow of the moon and it shone from his skin like some misplaced halo. Eddie couldn’t even conjure up anger at him for shouting recklessly outside of his house because all of his body was filled up with joy. What was he doing wallowing? He should have known Richie would come to his rescue. He always did. 

“Eds! Get down here!” Richie called, laughing when Eddie hushed him.

“Why don’t you come up?” Eddie whisper-shouted through the open window. The air that came in was colder than cold.

“ ’Cause I can’t stay, sweet thing. And my hands are full with your presents.” Richie was exaggerating. All he held was a flask.

“Fine, fine. I’m coming.” Eddie stepped away from the window to pull a sweater on over his pyjama top and step into a pair of shoes. He looked a little ridiculous with his plaid pyjama pants and bed-mussed hair but he couldn’t find it in him to care. Richie’s love for him went well beyond the neat, put-together manner he always wore. All he wanted was to get out of the looming walls of the house and get to Richie. He manoeuvred his way out of the window carefully and down the sturdy trellis that had weathered a lot worse than Eddie’s sleight frame. 

It was cold out. Viciously cold, but the moment he hit the ground, Richie enveloped him in his warmth and Eddie went boneless against him. He’d been waiting for this for the past four days. The cold couldn’t get to him. Not when he was so close to Richie that he could feel the boy’s beating heart through layers of clothing, could faintly smell the ashy scent that clung to Richie’s skin, could hear Richie saying his name like a prayer.

“My Eddie Spaghetti,” he said, his breath a frozen cloud brushing Eddie’s cheek. “Where have you been? Did the mother from hell lock you in?”

“Hi, Rich,” Eddie replied. The answers to his questions were obvious enough.

Richie stepped back, showing Eddie his hand enclosed around the neck of a flask. His smile was almost hidden by the thick scarf he was wearing and Eddie pushed his hands into the pockets of the winter coat Richie wore. Eddie’s eyes lingered on the red at the end of his nose, the pink shape of his mouth. For a moment, it looked like Richie was about to speak but Eddie quieted him with a warm kiss. A single source of warmth in the midst of winter. 

“Happy birthday, Eds,” Richie smiled. It was one of Eddie’s favourite Smiles. It was the one that lit up his eyes and spoke more volumes than Richie’s mouth ever could. It said  _ I love you  _ and  _ let me be your warmth  _ and  _ thank you for loving me _ .

Eddie didn’t even care that it was his birthday anymore. The frustrating need to cry had long gone. All he could focus on was Richie. Richie – who showed up at his house in the middle of the night, nose bitten by the cold, smiling like he strode one step ahead of the world, looking at Eddie like he held the secrets of the universe in his palm. Eddie had never been  more sure of anything in his life. He loved Richie. He loved Richie in the way of an emotion filling every ounce of him and sticking there without explanation or justification; an emotion that was all encompassing; an emotion that felt more like a physical ache everywhere. Eddie ached with love and the unscripted joy of that made him want to cry all over again.

“I love you, moron.”

“That was backhanded.”

“It was honest, though.”

Richie pursed his lips, his free hand rubbing circles on Eddie’s lower back. “I love you, too, midget.”

“If you call me a midget ever again – if you even  _ think  _ it – I will break up with you,” Eddie scowled, not an atom of truth in his words.

“No, you won’t because you love me,” Richie grinned and pinched Eddie’s cheek. “And I love you, birthday boy. Now, come on, I’ve got to give you your present before midnight! Or,  _ god help us _ , before Mrs K wakes up and eats me alive. Not because she hates me, because she wants a midnight snack.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Did you walk here?”

“Yeah, and I froze my fucking ass off so come on.” Richie sat himself down on the cold ground, leaning his back against the bricks of Eddie’s house. He put the rucksack he’d been wearing on his knee and offered the flask to Eddie: “It’s hot chocolate. I made it all by myself.”

“ _ Wow _ . That must have been hard for you,” Eddie said dryly but his chest warmed thinking of Richie pottering around his kitchen at night, trying not to wake his mom. He sank down beside Richie. Their shoulders pressed together, knees knocking. He remembered a time when moments like these fuelled his longing for Richie. They still did. The only difference now was that Eddie could lean over and kiss him if he wanted. He opened the flask and took a sip. It was still hot; warmth washing through him when he swallowed. “This is really good.”

“Why thank you, sweetness. Now, prepare to be amazed because I have the best gift for you. Only the best for my Eds.” Richi unzipped the rucksack, trembling hands disappearing inside to dig out Eddie’s gift.

Eddie was not at all prepared to be amazed.

He stared at the gift that sat in Richie’s flat palm, dwarfed by the size of Richie’s hands. Something akin to panic surged up in him all at once but once he registered it, he realised it wasn’t panic. It was the rush of feeling a million things at once. Feeling wonder. Feeling a happiness untouched by the rest of the world around them. Feeling love and gratitude and luck and love and love and love-

“Oh, Richie,” he breathed – the name was his oxygen.

Richie’s eyes were wide behind his glasses, darting all over Eddie’s face. He looked worried, as if Eddie could ever hate the gift. “I know it’s a lot. I know it – it  _ says  _ a lot but I’ve been saving up for it since my first shift and I’ve wanted this for a long time. Hell, I’ve wanted  _ you  _ for a long time. You’re it for me, Eds, and I don’t ever  wanna lose you. And we can’t get married. Obviously. Not that you’d say yes, anyway. I’m not, like  _ assuming _ . It’s like a promise ring and it’s - I’m going to love you forever. Do you know that?”

“Yes. Yes, yes. Oh,  _ Richie _ . Thank you,” Eddie said and set the flask down in order to haul Richie closer by the front of his coat. He pressed a kiss to Richie’s cold cheek and then to his lips. Incapable of stringing together a sentence, he settled for kissing Richie until his hands stopped shaking. He took the simple gold band and slid it onto his ring finger, then passed the flask to Richie. Richie couldn’t shake the smile from his face even when he drank.

“Did I do good?”

“You really are a moron if you think you didn’t.”

“It’s engraved on the inside, by the way. A little R + E.” Maybe it was the cold or maybe Richie was blushing.

“I love it, Richie. I love you.” Eddie leaned into Richie’s side and sighed when the warmth doubled between them. His head tipped onto Richie’s shoulder. He held his hand out, admiring the way the gold glinted white in the moonlight. “You know, if we could, I would marry the fuck out of you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Eddie shrugged. It was no big deal; just a piece of truth spoken into the night, surrendered to the crisp air.

“Wow- zah . Mr Eddie Spaghetti Tozier. It’s got a nice ring to it. They best legalise that shit so I can marry you,” Richie said and tilted his head to look at Eddie. Eddie knew it wasn’t possible but it looked like Richie held the moon in his eyes. The moon wasn’t hung in the sky tonight. It was there in Richie Tozier’s eyes, where midnight had come and gone, and two boys felt the vulnerability, the possibility, of love in the most secret parts of their hearts.


End file.
